If...: Turner Classic Movies British Film Guide

by Paul Sutton

Lindsay Anderson's provocative, savage and wickedly funny 1968 masterpiece, If... , deals fundamentally--and controversially--with England and quintessential ""Englishness."" If... was the first film ever with a British setting and cast to win the Palme d'Or for Best Film at Cannes. The fruit of Anderson's first-hand studies of the Czech, Polish and Indian New Waves led by Milos Forman, Andrzej Wajda and, most famously, Satyajit Ray, it prophesied--and then mirrored--an international outbreak of youthful rebellion. An authority on Lindsay Anderson and his films, Sutton here draws on massive quantities of original Anderson's private archive, which illuminates the film's autobiographical elements; the original script Crusaders ; the sequel on which he was working at the time of his death; interviews with key members of cast and crew including lead Malcolm McDowell, all are here explored to unravel the mysteries of a film which continues to delight, enrage and inspire.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Paul Sutton is a writer who has written for Big Finish Productions audio and collected novella range. He has written for the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors in Big Finish's audio story range and also a novella part of A Life in Pieces a Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield series.

Sutton also wrote two linked audio stories Arrangements for War and Thicker than Water which introduced the planet Világ and were part of the exit stories for Evelyn Smythe.